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Chornobyl disaster still casts a shadow 40 years later

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 21:44:04 +0000

Chornobyl disaster still casts a shadow 40 years later Rachel Sauer Thu, 08/27/2026 - 15:44

The New Safe Confinement structure placed over reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 2016. (Photo: iStock)

Bradley Worrell

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� political scientist Sarah Wilson Sokhey says the underlying lesson of the nuclear catastrophe is that the risk has not gone away—and that such disasters don’t recognize national borders

Forty years ago this month, Soviet officials issued their first formal comments on the Chornobyl nuclear disaster—five months after the April 21, 1986, meltdown of Nuclear Reactor No. 4 in Pripyat, Ukraine, released radioactivity across large portions of Europe.

Beyond being the world’s worst nuclear catastrophe on record, one of the most defining aspects of the disaster was the Soviet government’s deliberate decision to withhold information about it immediately afterward, according to Sarah Wilson Sokhey, an associate professor of political science at the University of Colorado Boulder who has spent more than 20 years studying the politics of Russia and the former Soviet Union.

In retrospect, Sokhey says the decision was not surprising given how the Soviet government operated as an organization.

Sarah Wilson Sokhey is a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� associate professor of political science who has spent more than 20 years studying the politics of Russia and the former Soviet Union.

“It was a very hierarchical system with a very specific chain of command, and there were strong incentives not to report problems and accidents or to minimize their effects,” she explains.

Sokhey notes that it’s not unusual for governments to withhold some information during a crisis to avoid creating unnecessary alarm, but she argues that was not an adequate explanation in the case of Chornobyl.

“If we had a more charitable interpretation of it, we might say they were trying to prevent a panic, but that’s not what was happening in this case because there were people at the heart of the accident who knew right at the beginning how bad this was and how bad it could get,” she says.

Not only did Soviet authorities not notify Western countries near Ukraine, but they didn’t let their own citizens know about what happened in the immediate aftermath. That included nearby residents, who were not evacuated until 36 hours later—even though government officials who were directly involved understood the situation was severe, Sokhey says.

According to the World Nuclear Association, two Chornobyl workers died instantly from the physical blast of the explosion and building collapse on the night of the accident and 28 firefighters and emergency workers died within the first few weeks from acute radiation syndrome.

Meanwhile, the Soviet republic of Belarus, located near the disaster zone, also experienced significant fallout. Sokhey says Belarussian scientists observed elevated radiation levels and that certain areas later saw increased rates of thyroid cancer, particularly in children.

While the Soviet government initially remained mum about the accident, Sokhey says efforts to control information collided with the reality that the disaster could not be confined within Ukraine’s borders. As elevated radiation levels were detected in Sweden and other Western countries, it was no longer possible to keep things under wraps.

Fallout from the nuclear disaster

In the weeks and months following the Soviet government’s first announcement of the nuclear disaster, more information came to light that showed just how serious the accident was, Sokhey says.

Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant several months after the disaster. (Photo: Ukrainian Society for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries)

“What we know now is that this was not just a small fire and it could not be quickly contained,” she says, contrasting that information with initial government reports. “It was a meltdown of the core of the nuclear reactor, so it was very serious.”

The consequences became obvious relatively quickly.

“They not only evacuated Pripyat, but they didn’t allow people to return,” Sokhey says. “And it was very soon after obvious that they would need to engage in a long-term cleanup effort and have a sarcophagus (containment structure) that was built around the reactor.”

As a proactive measure, the government later resettled 116,000 people who lived within a 30 kilometer radius of the nuclear power plant.

As a result of the disaster, Chornobyl spurred further global debate over the safety of nuclear energy, coming before Three Mile Island in the United States and after Fukushima in Japan, Sokhey notes.

Although the scale of Chornobyl disaster was ultimately acknowledged by the Soviet government, debates over the causes continued for years.

“In the Soviet system, there was a longer process that played out to pin the blame on who, exactly, was responsible within the system,” Sokhey says. “The acknowledgement of the scale of what happened, the accident itself and the conditions under which it happened came not very long after the accident because it had to.”

Initially, blame centered on the plant operators, who shut down the reactor’s safety systems to run tests. Later, questions were raised about the design and construction of the reactor.

A loss of trust

While Soviet officials eventually acknowledged the scale of the crisis and undertook a massive cleanup effort, many Soviet citizens felt deeply betrayed by the initial denials and the delay, Sokhey says.

She attended an event in Denver earlier this year hosted by the National Association of Ukrainian Women to remember the disaster, where some attendees shared their experiences. Sokhey says one woman who lived in Kyiv at the time recalled that large public events continued in the country’s capital days after the Chornobyl explosion, potentially exposing thousands of people to conditions that many now believe should have prompted caution and limited outdoor activity. The woman reported that some information regarding Chornobyl spread via word of mouth and rumors, but that governmental official remained mum at the time.

“For Ukrainians in particular, Chornobyl feeds into a long historical narrative of atrocities committed against the Ukrainian people by the Soviet and Russian system,” Sokhey says. “You’ll hear people in Ukraine talk about it in that vein. They’ll talk about the mass starvation that happened in the Stalinist period with Holodomor and they’ll talk about Chornobyl, because these are seen as a pattern of disregard, or even a pattern of hatred, toward Ukrainian life.”

In retrospect, it is fair to say that Chornobyl deeply damaged the Soviet Union’s reputation both at home and abroad, Sokhey says.

“I think it very much fed into the narrative that the Soviet system was corrupt, outdated and dishonest,” she says. “The public caught them in a very dramatic example of both incompetence and outdated technology and not being honest about the level of the disaster.”

At the same time, Sokhey cautions against the idea that Chornobyl was the catalyst for the Soviet Union’s collapse.

The New Safe Confinement structure placed over reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 2016. (Photo: iStock)

At the time of the accident, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was pursuing sweeping reforms through “Perestroika” (restructuring) and “Glasnost” (transparency). Economic restructuring was producing disruptions and shortages, while increasing openness allowed citizens to express their frustrations more freely, Sokhey says. She adds that the Soviet war in Afghanistan was draining resources and costing lives, while several Soviet republics including Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states were becoming restive.

“All of those things were working together to undermine the Soviet system,” Sokhey says.

Lessons for today

For Sokhey, one of the most enduring lessons of Chornobyl is that environmental disasters can affect everyone, regardless of political boundaries. She argues that the world must pay close attention when authoritarian governments are responsible for reporting information about disasters because the incentives to conceal bad news can delay effective responses and increase harm.

Sokhey says that lesson resonates today, as Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has renewed concerns about nuclear safety in the region. She points to ongoing worries surrounding both the Chornobyl site, which has been damaged in the fighting, as well as the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine, which is the largest nuclear plant in Europe and which was captured by Russia during the early days of the invasion. Sokhey notes that another nuclear-related crisis could happen at any time.

Forty years after the world learned that something had gone horribly wrong in a small town in northern Ukraine, Sokhey says the radiation may have diminished, but its lessons have not.

“What happened at Chornobyl remains a risk today, and I think it teaches us the danger of what happens when authoritarian regimes are faced with crises—especially ones that affect people outside of their own country.”

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When leaving isn't a choice, staying becomes one

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 20:55:11 +0000

When leaving isn't a choice, staying becomes one Rachel Sauer Mon, 08/24/2026 - 14:55

Cody DeBos

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researchers ask who decides to stay behind when climate disaster strikes

“I don’t know when I floated to the river bank—but I survived. Remember, to live here, you have to be brave as crocodiles in water and tigers on land. But the peace of living here will not be found anywhere else.”

That’s how a grandmother in coastal Bangladesh once described surviving a flood to her 17-year-old granddaughter.

This type of survival knowledge, passed on from generation to generation, is one thread in a much larger tapestry of climate-driven migration. Lori Hunter, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� professor of sociology and director of the Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS), has been working to better understand the phenomenon and how to support the people it affects.

Lori Hunter is a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� professor of sociology and director of the Institute of Behavioral Science.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, women are most commonly the ones who stay behind when disaster strikes. Hunter says this partially comes down to socialization and the process of “learning” gender and what’s expected of us.

“Some of what we learn through this process relates to migration—what is seen as ‘acceptable’ in terms of men and women relocating,” she says.

Of course, the full picture is more nuanced.

Connecting the pieces

Hunter’s interest in people, places, and their connection to the environment goes back more than 30 years to her days in the Pacific Northwest.

“I lived in Seattle for many years, and my original curiosity was fueled by seeing the region’s demographic change as related to high levels of in-migration back in the 1980s,” she says.

Environmental amenities were clearly a draw to the area, leading to a boom in population growth that has significantly altered the region and its natural resources.

Yet, as Hunter puts it, “migration researchers just weren’t integrating broader environmental context into their investigations of human movement.”

That initial spark eventually led to a more focused interest in gender and specifically how it relates to human migration driven by climate change.

After co-authoring a paper on the subject that was published in 2011, Hunter was asked to create a white paper that would be included in World Bank’s Groundswell report.

“At the time there was virtually no research on the three-way intersection of displacement, climate change, and gender. We pulled together scholarship on 1) disasters and gender, 2) disasters and migration, 3) gender and risk perceptions and other related sub-topics to inform a discussion of potential connections,” she says.

More than a decade later, Hunter’s work has evolved into an examination of not only who leaves when climate disaster upends normal life, but equally those who choose not to or are forced to stay.

Forgetting about those who stay

The gap in both relocation by gender and the study of non-migration itself is at the heart of Hunter’s newest work with lead author Bishawjit Mallick, a IBS Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow. Published in Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, the paper details a framework called Intergenerational Gendered Environmental Non-Migration, or IGEN.

Hunter explains that human populations change through three processes. Birth, death, and migration all have a part to play.

“Demographers have long studied migration as an outcome (just like births and deaths). Who moves? Why do they move? What are the implications of those moves?” Hunter says.

“Although some women aspire to leave, many lack the agency to make such mobility decisions,” says ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researcher Lori Hunter. (Photo: Albert Gonzalez Farran/United Nations)

But despite all the research, there is a blind spot.

“The question of who doesn’t move just hasn’t been on the table. Perhaps because most people don’t move so it’s more interesting to consider who does,” she adds.

Yet, in locations facing repeated natural disasters, understanding who stays (and why) is anything but academic. Hunter’s IGEN framework suggests one reason for those decisions is the influence of gender roles that have been reinforced across generations.

“Living under a patriarchal social structure, in some cultural settings, women are often expected to move in with their in-laws after marriage. This can promote a situation where men become the primary decisionmaker, diminishing women’s agency,” Hunter explains.

“If women are more likely to remain at home as a result of cultural expectations but also have less access to income or other resources as a consequence of patriarchy, they become increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of disasters,” she continues.

As these factors compound, women living in high-risk areas may be pressed into staying somewhere they don’t really want to be regardless of their preference.

“Although some women aspire to leave, many lack the agency to make such mobility decisions,” Hunter says.

In her view, this is exactly why the research gap needs closing.

“The gap really does matter, and the example of climate-related disasters demonstrates why,” Hunter says. “It’s important to understand who is staying in risky areas—and why—in order to provide appropriate support within local communities and reduce vulnerabilities.”

Inherited ground

Of course, “staying” isn’t a decision defined by gender alone. Inheritance also plays a significant role in keeping someone rooted in place, despite logic and scientific evidence pointing them elsewhere.

“Some people choose to stay in a risky locale (voluntary non-migration), even if they understand the risk,” Hunter says.

During an earlier project’s fieldwork, one forty-three-year-old fisherman said “Our ancestors built this house for us. We want to stay here. It’s a very important part of our life. This village is our identity.”

This can help explain why, after devastating floods and cyclones, many families choose to rebuild on the exact same plot of land that was washed away.

Not everyone gets the choice, though.

“On the other hand, some stay in a risky locale because they’re unable to move (involuntary), such as perhaps lacking the funds to resettle elsewhere,” Hunter says.

This is often the case when changing environmental patterns have already lowered the value of a family’s home, or when affordability has put land elsewhere out of reach.

I think it’s important to consider the reasons why someone might be staying. We have a tendency to blame individuals if they remain in risky locales without considering why they remain."

Quoted from the paper, a seventy-one-year-old housewife from Bangladesh told the research team, “So many people are moving from here by buying land in other places, but we don’t have the ability to buy land.”

A 43-year-old housewife echoed the sentiment, saying, “If I had money, I would have bought land far away.”

For many in these communities, the reason for non-migration falls somewhere in the middle. The choice is often shaped as much by a lack of resources and agency as by attachment to a home.

Rethinking the motive

Hunter hopes that more research into non-migration amid the many challenges posed by environmental harm and gender norms will help reframe the conversation.

“I think it’s important to consider the reasons why someone might be staying. We have a tendency to blame individuals if they remain in risky locales without considering why they remain,” she says.

In the same vein, Hunter says much migration isn’t due to choice.

“Most people want to stay where they are. If climate-related pressures are combined with other economic and/or socio-cultural challenges, people might be forced to make a move they’d rather not,” she says.

Shifting the focus from blame to understanding is something for everyone to consider. Hunter also hopes this mindset is embraced by those with the power to enact change at the highest levels.

“I would love it if policymakers recognized that many people do not want to migrate but are forced to do so if climate pressures make their current lives untenable,” she says. “Supporting individuals and families to stay in their origin communities could reduce the tide of migration.”

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researchers ask who decides to stay behind when climate disaster strikes.

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Rap battles, wrong ravens and Ragnarök

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 16:12:18 +0000

Rap battles, wrong ravens and Ragnarök Rachel Sauer Fri, 08/21/2026 - 10:12

Clay Bonnyman Evans

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� scholar Mathias Nordvig publishes new book on Old Norse mythology

Ponding the plethora of introductory texts on Old Norse mythology, Mathias Nordvig had an epiphany.

“There are so many set up like dictionaries of myth, so you can look up (the god) Odin, you look up Asgard,” home of the Norse gods, says Nordvig, associate teaching professor in the Department of Germanic & Slavic Languages & Literatures at the University of Colorado Boulder. “I realized there wasn’t really a book that introduces Old Norse mythology from the vantage point of the literature itself, the sources. I wanted people to know the texts and stories where we get this information.”

Mathias Nordvig is an associate teaching professor in the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of Germanic & Slavic Languages & Literatures.

The results of that epiphany — and a lot of hard work — have just been published: Old Norse Mythology: An Introduction to the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda (Routledge, 2026; 166 pages with black-and-white illustrations).

Nordvig, who is proficient in Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic, presents works and exegesis of the two major sources of Old Norse mythology: the Poetic Edda, a collection of alliterative verse and narrative poems recorded by anonymous authors based on centuries of oral and written tradition; and the Prose Edda, an assemblage of tales written by the Icelandic Christian scholar Snorri Sturluson around 1220 CE.

He describes the Poetic Edda as “complicated,” due to its origins as a collection of verse remembered and composed by unknown authors from verse from ancient folk material — “grand poem” about such things as Odin challenging a giant about wisdom, the creation story and Ragnarök, a kind of Old Norse apocalypse — and subsequently assembled as a single work.

“When they were written down, they were already centuries old. They were reinterpreted and misunderstood in the later context,” says Nordvig, who is proficient in Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic. “They are written in different meters and different translators made different choices.”

One poem, “Hindla’s Song,” taken from a book that includes the tales of Viking travel to North America — Christopher Columbus was centuries behind it turns out — is one of the few works in which the female deity Freya “does the walking and talking,” Nordvig says. It recounts the story of Óttarr, who summons Freya to help him identify his ancestry to win an inheritance. She turns him into a boar and rides to the underworld to retrieve the sorceress and seer Hindla, and the two women recount his pedigree in detail.

“Óttarr just happens to be related to every famous Viking that ever existed,” Nordvig says.

In Old Norse Mythology: An Introduction to the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Professor Mathias Nordvig presents works and exegesis of the two major sources of Old Norse mythology.

He cites “The Song of Hárbard” as a favorite. In the tale, Thor and a snarky ferryman who just might be the hero’s father Odin in disguise, “have a kind of rap battle,” he says. They trade barbs and boasts about their respective sexual and magical feats as they traverse a flood-swollen river.

“It’s hilarious,” Nordvig says. “There are some wonderful insults in there.”

He describes Snorri’s Edda, as the Prose is also known, as a “more comprehensive presentation of Old Norse mythology to go to when you want to know something or look it up.”

The historian and politician Snorri wrote from his 13^th-century Christian perspective, so he is at pains to inform readers that he doesn’t really believe this stuff. In one section, he shores his position with a frame story in which the gods are merely humans duping a foolish king of Sweden.

“The other is the same kind of setting, only everyone is really drunk,” Nordvig says. “That was the only way he could present the stories.”

Snorri quotes from poems unknown in any other source, and modern scholarship has found that Snorri didn’t always get it right.

“There is this famous idea that Odin the god-king and warrior-king is accompanied by two ravens and two wolves. But he based that on his own extravagant interpretation of poetry. There is no mention of ravens and wolves closely connected to Odin,” he says.

Nordvig also notes that there is crossover between Old Norse mythology and material from the British Isles and Ireland, where Vikings raided and established settlements for 300 years, beginning in the late 8^th century.

“Some of that old Irish charm, the old English charm, shows up in western Norway,” he says.

While published as a textbook, Nordvig says he also wrote with lay readers in mind.

“I tried to make it as accessible as possible, somewhere between academic and popular language,” he says. “I’m trying to open it up for readers, to scratch the surface off and present this wealth of fascinating, sometimes confusing, information.”

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� scholar Mathias Nordvig publishes new book on Old Norse mythology.

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Top image: "Der letzte Kampf" by Johannes Gehrts, 1888

What does a scientist look like?

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 23:05:47 +0000

What does a scientist look like? Rachel Sauer Thu, 08/20/2026 - 17:05

Cody DeBos

In STEM, the stereotypes go beyond gender, asserts PhD candidate Sheba Aikawa

Ask a kindergartner to draw a scientist, and there’s a good chance a male figure will appear below the tip of a crayon. Decades of research have documented this tendency. Its persistence despite strong efforts to increase diversity in STEM fields points to something stubbornly embedded in the way society imagines who belongs in science.

Sheba Aikawa, a sixth-year social psychology PhD candidate in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, wanted to push the established literature further.

“We wanted to understand whether adding race would change how people perceive who ‘fits’ the scientist stereotype,” she says.

Sheba Aikawa is a sixth-year social psychology PhD candidate in the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of Psychology and Neuroscience.

The answer, it turns out, is that stereotypes of who “should” be a scientist and how scientists look aren’t limited to gender.

Who fits the mold?

Aikawa’s interest is in exploring ideas of identity, perception and belonging.

“Broadly, my research examines what factors promote welcoming spaces and how negative stereotypes may lead to hostile environments across healthcare, academia and workplace settings,” she says.

Working under Eva Pietri, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, Aikawa’s latest study builds on earlier work establishing that traits associated with scientists are more strongly linked to men than women.

Published in the journal Group Processes & Intergroup Relations and co-authored by graduate student Nadia Floyd and Bernadette Park, professor emerita of psychology and neuroscience, the study asks whether that pattern holds when race is added to the conversation.

“We focused on scientists specifically because we wanted to examine whether the gender bias identified in previous research would hold when considering race. But our findings also have broader implications for understanding STEM bias more generally,” Aikawa says.

Across four experiments involving more than 1,100 white and Black participants, the results were consistent.

What the data reveals

Participants were asked to estimate what percentage of Black men, Black women, white men and white women society views as possessing scientist traits. This includes both positive traits like being analytical or meticulous as well as negative ones like being robotic or unsociable.

Across every study and across both white and Black participant groups, white men were perceived as most likely to possess scientist traits. Aikawa wasn’t surprised by this, but what the data revealed next was more interesting.

“What we found was that Black men and Black women were viewed similarly on scientist-related traits,” Aikawa says. “This suggests that racial stereotypes may be a particularly important factor shaping perceptions of who is seen as belonging in science.”

The gender gap documented in prior research, with men outpacing women in perceived scientific fit, essentially disappeared among Black individuals. Along the same lines, scientific perception of both Black men and Black women was rated lower than white women.

“The finding that race mattered more than gender did not necessarily surprise me,” Aikawa says.

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researcher Sheba Aikawa and her colleagues found that although there was no difference between white women and Black men and women on negative scientist traits, study participants rated white women as higher on positive scientist traits than Black men and Black women.

She points to multiple studies from her lab consistently supporting the idea that race plays a “powerful role in shaping perceptions across different contexts, including healthcare.”

“We know there are pervasive stereotypes that portray Black people as less competent, which could affect perceptions of both Black men and Black women,” Aikawa adds.

More than a number

The real-world implications of Aikawa and her team’s findings are huge. Stereotypes and perceptions about who looks like a scientist shape the decisions made by people in positions of power and determine who gets an opportunity to carry out important research or further their education.

“Even people who value diversity may unknowingly hold assumptions about who looks like a scientist or who seems naturally suited for STEM,” Aikawa says. “Awareness does not necessarily mean that people recognize how those beliefs influence their own judgments and behaviors.”

Those biases emerge early, even in children as young as five to six years old, and have persisted across generations. However, she sees signs of societal change moving in the right direction.

“We’re seeing more diverse representations of scientists in children’s media through characters like Doc McStuffins and Ada Twist, Scientist. Increasing visibility of diverse scientists helps broaden children’s understanding of who belongs in STEM.”

She also has a longer outlook.

“I’m optimistic that these perceptions of scientists can change. In fact, I would hope that if someone replicated our studies 100 years from now, they would find very different results.”

And though the findings might appear disheartening at first, Aikawa feels they could be empowering. The feeling of not fitting in, she argues, is not a verdict on a person's potential. By shifting the focus away from individual shortcomings and onto broader societal perceptions, she hopes minorities in STEM see that they do belong.

“The problem is not that Black women are less capable of being scientists; the problem is that society's image of a scientist has historically been narrow and exclusionary,” she says.

Who gets to be a scientist?

For any Black woman who has ever walked into a lab and felt like she didn't quite belong, Aikawa has a message to share.

“If you have ever felt like you don’t fit the stereotypical image of a scientist, that feeling is not simply a reflection of your abilities or potential,” she says. “If you've ever questioned whether you belong in STEM, our findings suggest that those feelings may stem from societal stereotypes rather than from a lack of talent, intelligence or potential.”

In many ways, expanding and redefining what a scientist looks like is exactly how these stereotypes change over time.”

On an individual level, Aikawa also reminds prospective Black scientists that they don’t have to fit society’s mold.

Addressing these stereotypes, though, requires more than individual awareness. Changing perceptions, both internally and societally, takes a collective effort.

Aikawa experienced this firsthand through the Boulder Black Blossoms program at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��. Led by Christina Alston, director of the Office of Graduate Access and Retention and faculty affiliate in the School of Education, the program creates a community for Black women in STEM and education graduate programs.

“What I appreciated about this program is that it did not just focus on individual resilience—it focused on creating belonging, connection and support within an academic environment. Those types of structural and community-level supports are critical for helping historically underrepresented groups thrive in STEM,” Aikawa says.

Ultimately, Aikawa sees the work of dismantling harmful stereotypes in STEM as an ongoing, collaborative effort. She says being aware of the stereotypes is an important first step. Increasing diversity in STEM fields and building supportive communities and mentorship networks is equally important.

Over time, she notes, these efforts compound to reshape society’s perspective on who gets to be a scientist.

“In many ways, expanding and redefining what a scientist looks like is exactly how these stereotypes change over time.”

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In STEM, the stereotypes go beyond gender, asserts PhD candidate Sheba Aikawa.

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Top image: scientists Albert Einstein, Rebecca Lee Crumpler, George Washington Carver and Marie Curie

Rebecca Safran wins American Ornithological Society Elliott Coues Award

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:15:35 +0000

Rebecca Safran wins American Ornithological Society Elliott Coues Award Rachel Sauer Mon, 08/17/2026 - 18:15

The ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� ecology and evolutionary biology professor is recognized for her research on barn swallows and other avian groups, which has taken her across the world

Rebecca Safran, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado Boulder, has been awarded the Elliott Coues Award by the American Ornithological Society (AOS). The AOS is the world’s largest international ornithological society focused on the scientific study and conservation of birds.

The Elliott Coues Award recognizes outstanding and innovative contributions to ornithological research with no limitation to geographic area, sub-disciplines of ornithology or the time during which the work was done. The award, which consists of a medal and an honorarium, is named in honor of Elliott Coues, a pioneering ornithologist of the western United States and a founding member of the American Ornithologists Union (now AOS).

Rebecca Safran, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��, has been awarded the Elliott Coues Award by the American Ornithological Society.

“I am honored by this recognition of the research we do in our lab group at the University of Colorado Boulder,” Safran said. “My first-ever scientific meeting was an AOS conference. I attend these meetings with students as often as I can for the best research updates on bird studies from around the world. There is always something new and exciting to learn. I am humbled to receive this award; past awardees are my academic heroes and have inspired much of the work many of us do today.”

In recognizing Safran, the AOS noted that she and her research group have traveled across the world to study barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) and have conducted comparative analyses on other avian groups as part of efforts to study the evolution and maintenance of population differentiation using ecological, genomics and behavioral studies.

Safran and her team established their research lab at the University of Colorado in 2008, where Safran's teaching is focused on speciation and science communication. She is the founding co-director of Inside the Greenhouse, which has a mission to find creative ways to communicate the science of climate change.

In naming Safran as an Elliott Coues Award winner, the AOS said she is passionate about the evolution and conservation of wild bird populations, interdisciplinary collaboration, art-science connections, issues related to belonging in STEM, natural history and providing learning opportunities for students at all stages of their education.

Safran is an AOS elective member (2011) and an elected board member of Environment for the Americas and the Colorado Environmental Film Festival. She is an elected fellow of the AOS (2016), the Animal Behavior Society (2024) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2026).

Safran previously received AOS travel grants in 1999 and 2003 and an AOU research grant in 2001. This support was key for Safran’s research and conference participation during graduate school. Safran noted she is grateful for the support the AOS now provides to members of her team for their research and conference attendance.

Safran said her work is not possible without the collaboration of students and colleagues and through funding by several entities including the AOS and National Science Foundation. Wherever she goes (and sometimes to the dismay of others walking with her), she is always on the lookout for H. rustica and their mud cup nests.

Safran earned her PhD at Cornell University, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University.

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The ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� ecology and evolutionary biology professor is recognized for her research on barn swallows and other avian groups, which has taken her across the world.

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A lifetime of dance started on a skateboard

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 23:02:17 +0000

A lifetime of dance started on a skateboard Rachel Sauer Mon, 08/17/2026 - 17:02

When hip-hop icon and legendary choreographer Rennie Harris joins 'The Ampersand' podcast, expect to learn the difference between the backslide and the moonwalk

Listen to The Ampersand

Late last year, New York Times arts critic Brian Seibert, in discussing Rennie Harris’ piece “American Street Dancer,” wrote that “Harris has done more than any other choreographer to reveal and develop the metaphorical and narrative expressivity of American street dance.”

In the world of dance, he’s a legend—named a “Living Legend” by Dance magazine, in fact—yet he’s also the guy you might occasionally see tooling around the University of Colorado Boulder campus on a skateboard.

Harris has changed the face of concert dance by introducing hip-hop and street styles in innovative ways, and for 10 years he has been a guest artist in ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� dance program.

Rennie Harris has changed the face of concert dance by introducing hip-hop and street styles in innovative ways and for 10 years he has been a guest artist in ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� dance program. (Photo: Osamu Inoue)

He recently joined host Erika Randall, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� dean and vice provost of undergraduate education and professor of dance, on "The Ampersand,” a College of Arts and Sciences podcast. Randall and guests explore stories about ANDing as a “full sensory verb” that describes experience and possibility.

For Harris, that experience and possibility starts with showing up. Hip-hop is a participatory culture, he says, and for those who show up? Well, that’s when the divine happens.

RENNIE HARRIS: My first skateboard was made by a cat, his name is Lewis Bailey. He is part of the younger kids, siblings, of Bill Bailey.

ERIKA RANDALL: Stop it.

HARRIS: Yes, he was my classmate and …

RANDALL: And he built boards? Tell me the story.

HARRIS: We were friends since middle school, parochial school. I went to Roman Catholic, he went to a public school. So, he built boards, and that was how I got my first board.

RANDALL: Did you know who … so, who was Bill Bailey?

HARRIS: Bill Bailey is his father. Bill was a tapper. Pearl Bailey, his aunt. I used to hang out at their house all the time. He's also the first person I saw do the backslide.

We were in recess, and he was gliding across the gravel and everyone stopped. He looked like he was walking, but he was gliding. He was moving backwards, but his feet …

RANDALL: First time you've ever seen it.

HARRIS: Yeah. Knees going foom, like what the heck is that? And he says, oh, my father taught me.

RANDALL: Stop it.

HARRIS: And that's all he said. Later on, we became really close friends.

RANDALL: But he didn't call it moonwalk.

HARRIS: No, no, the original, it's called the backslide. The moonwalk actually goes forward, and it looks like you're walking on the moon.

RANDALL: Yeah, that's moonwalk in hip hop.

HARRIS: That's why it's called the moonwalk in street dance, yeah.

RANDALL: But Earl Snakehips Tucker was doing the backslide …

HARRIS: I saw Bill Bailey in 1933 do it, do the backslide. And he was known for that.

RANDALL: In tap shoes.

HARRIS: So, that's the first time I see it. I meet with—his name was Johnny, Lewis Bailey, but they call him Johnny, Johnny Bailey. Yeah, so he made me a board. And then he started teaching me 360s, spacewalk, walk the dog, helicopter, doing planks …

RANDALL: So, you were breaking on your board.

HARRIS: Yeah, doing handstands and planks on the board. I was like, oh, snap. Yeah, so we should do all that. I said do 360s with two boards.

RANDALL: And you were dancing at the same time

For Rennie Harris, hip-hop is a participatory culture. (Photo: Bob Emmott)

HARRIS: Yeah, all this was happening at the same time.

RANDALL: You were always doing all the things.

HARRIS: Yeah, especially in the summer we would get up and be out of the house by 8 in the morning. We were just out. We were out. And, of course, this is when landlines were …

RANDALL: For people listening at home, that's when there's a phone in the wall and a cord that's attached.

HARRIS: So, at that time we would go out, never went back home until like 11 at night.

RANDALL: So, it wasn't even, ‘It starts to get dark, I want you home, Lorenzo.’

HARRIS: When I was younger, it had to be when the streetlights came on. That was always like 6, 7. You had to be on the block.

RANDALL: Within yelling distance.

HARRIS: ‘I need to be able to see you,’ that kind of thing. And so we would go out 8, 9 in the morning. I'd be across the city three or four times already by the time I got back. We were just walking and doing all kinds of stuff.

RANDALL: And you had a crew.

HARRIS: Yeah. We were skateboard. We played basketball. We'd go to the park. We used to play army man because we all thought we were going to go into the military after high school.

RANDALL: You did?

HARRIS: Oh, that was the plan ...

RANDALL: So, your first performance, can you take us back as a dancer, the first time you made money and when you had the entrepreneurialism, the moxie to say, ‘I'm going to make money on this thing that we've been doing in the community but now I'm going to figure out how to make a living?’

HARRIS: The first time I ever got paid was not performance. I was teaching. And I did this little lecture, Brenda Dixon Gottschild brought me in. I was about 14 or something.

RANDALL: BDG brought you in at 14?

HARRIS: She was at Temple. Yeah.

RANDALL: How did you know her?

HARRIS: I didn't at the time.

RANDALL: How'd she find you?

HARRIS: I have no clue.

RANDALL: That is bizarre. She's one of the greatest dance scholars of all time, and she's bringing in 14-year-old not yet Sir Rennie Harris.

HARRIS: We had become very popular in Philadelphia as a street dance crew. We were poppers, we weren't breakers.

RANDALL: What was your crew's name?

HARRIS: The Scanner Boys. And we became so popular that our name was at city hall. All the programs and all the things, any time there was an event ...

RANDALL: Let's get the Scanner Boys.

HARRIS: They called the Scanner Boys to be the entertainment. You know what I mean.

RANDALL: So, you brought hip hop to the university at 14.

HARRIS: Possibly, yeah.

RANDALL: That's wild.

HARRIS: Because everyone wanted to know what I did.

RANDALL: Yeah, so what did you say? What does 14-year-old Rennie say about popping?

HARRIS: I was just explaining what pop is, we're street dancers, blah blah blah blah.

RANDALL: Did you demo?

HARRIS: Yeah, I demoed. I demoed, I remember that. And I remember sitting in her office at Temple.

RANDALL: She saw a gap, though, in dance studies. She saw that this was not in the books, that this was not in the classroom. This was not in the literature. And you were the first guest then. I'm going to say you were the first.

HARRIS: Yeah, I was a kid.

RANDALL: And you did not have designs yet to be in the Academy or bring hip hop to the …

HARRIS: Oh, no. I will tell you this, because you mentioned something about money earlier. I will tell you this. It was all economics. If you paid me, I'd dance. I was like Tina Turner, your private dancer. That was one of my favorite songs, too.

RANDALL: Oh my God, Tina.

HARRIS: But do you know what I'm saying? So, we would go to different bars, go to lounges, and try to get money from the old people because we knew the old people would be drinking and they would be drunk.

RANDALL: Would you put out a jar or a hat?

HARRIS: We would have a hat, and say we go to the door of the bar and be like, ‘Hey, can we come in and dance?’ And dude was like, ‘Quick, make it quick.’ All right, all right. So, we'll go in and they'll put some music on, and we'll play off the jukebox, play something. And we would dance, and then we'd pass the hat around.

RANDALL: And you would take turns improvising? Or would you run it like a cipher?

HARRIS: It was always an improvisation, and it was always what I would call traditional hip hop busking. We would all stand in a line, do what they call the Soul Clap or the Soul Step, just a two-step to the left. And then we would do a solo, and then sometimes we'd do a routine to break it up. You know what I mean? And really, any kind of choreography was just a means to get to the solo for everyone. And so that's what we did, and then we would put out the hat.

Click play to hear the rest of the conversation!

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When hip-hop icon and legendary choreographer Rennie Harris joins 'The Ampersand' podcast, expect to learn the difference between the backslide and the moonwalk.

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Top photo: Rennie Harris (left) teaching a dance class. (Photo: Patrick Campbell/��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��)

Research shows flowering plants formed rainforests 10 million years earlier than previously thought

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 15:40:38 +0000

Research shows flowering plants formed rainforests 10 million years earlier than previously thought Rachel Sauer Mon, 08/17/2026 - 09:40

Rachel Sauer

CU Museum curator adjoint Gary Upchurch and colleagues find evidence in ‘botanical Pompeii’ that forests of tropical flowering plants thrived millions of years before dinosaurs’ extinction

In the Jose Creek Formation of south-central New Mexico near the town of Truth or Consequences is what researchers call a “botanical Pompeii.”

There, preserved in volcanic ash, is fossil evidence that flowering plants became dominant in forests a lot earlier than previously thought—almost 10 million years earlier.

“There was a dogma that I helped create back in the ‘80s, which was that tropical-style rainforests, dominated by angiosperms (flowering plants), did not really get established until the Cenozoic (about 66 million years ago),” explains Gary Upchurch, CU Museum curator adjoint and former University of Colorado Boulder postdoctoral researcher. “There may have been some farther back in very isolated regions, but there is a big expansion of this type of vegetation in the early Cenozoic.

Gary Upchurch, CU Museum curator adjoint and former University of Colorado Boulder postdoctoral researcher, and his research colleagues found evidence that flowering plants formed rainforests 10 million years earlier than previously thought.

“So, I published papers on that back in the ‘80s, with the caveat that there may be some little bits here and there that are older.”

Over many years of research in the Jose Creek Formation, Upchurch and his colleagues discovered some of those “little bits”: diaspores, or the seeds and associated dispersal materials of flowering plants, dating back nearly 76 million years—almost 10 million years before an asteroid strike that led to the mass extinction of dinosaurs. They detail their findings in a paper recently published in the journal Science.

Previously, Upchurch explains, it was thought that flowering plants became dominant on the landscape only after this mass-extinction event, but the diaspores he and his colleagues unearthed in New Mexico say otherwise. They tell a story of angiosperms that developed large, fleshy fruits even before the rise of placental mammals and modern birds—which eat the fruit and help disperse the seeds—encouraged them to do so.

An anomaly in the geologic record

“Flowering plants themselves are an anomaly in the geologic record because all the major phyla of plants occur in a very narrow window of time, basically by the Late Devonian [382 to 359 million years ago] into the Carboniferous [359 to 299 million years ago],” Upchurch says. “The flowering plant lineage must have been around then, but we don't see anything that we would call flowering plants until the Cretaceous [145 to 66 million years ago].

“There are some tantalizing remains that go back further in time, but the oldest that everybody would agree on is about 140 million years old. Now, flowering plants started off as weedy plants, perhaps in forest understories, and their seeds were small and dispersed mostly without help, maybe a little wind. One of the debates has been, when did they become big? When did they become dominant on the landscape?”

As a postdoctoral paleobotany researcher at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� and longtime professor at Texas State University, from which he retired in 2020, Upchurch contributed to longstanding ideas in paleobotany and paleoecology that flowering plants thrived after the dinosaurs.

Throughout his research career, though, he has encountered evidence challenging those ideas. One of his earlier papers detailed an angiosperm leaf assemblage with rainforest structure in the Mid-Cretaceous Dakota Formation of Kansas that’s about 100 million years old. And recent papers by different authors describe Campanian-age tropical rainforests in northern Mexico and North Africa.

He also repeatedly encountered bias in the fossil record having to do with the fact that “so many of our fossil deposits are from coastlines and carbonaceous deposits,” he says. “And when you look today in places like the southeastern U.S., the swamps tend to be dominated by conifers, even though more broadly flowering plants are the dominants.”

Upchurch says he began researching in the Jose Creek Formation almost by accident. During his postdoctoral studies, one of his focuses was end-Cretaceous extinction and coming up with evidence for mass mortality of vegetation in response to the asteroid impact, followed by recovery.

Around that time, noted geologist Greg Mack of New Mexico State University called Upchurch and said he had some fossils that he’d like somebody to look at.

“And whenever Greg Mack says that, you go, ‘Oh, my god, here’s my career,’” Upchurch says.

Seed and fruit fossils found in the Jose Creek Formation of south-central New Mexico. (Image: Cindy Looy and Jaemin Lee/UC Berkeley)

So, beginning in 1991, Upchurch and later members of his lab began studying a series of locations that turned out to be Late Campanian Age, about 76 to 72.1 million years ago, and that were far inland from the epicontinental seaway that traversed North America during the Cretaceous.

What they found was angiosperm dominance in at least some of the assemblages they studied, especially those that were developing not in swamps but in well-drained soils like those in the Jose Creek Formation.

Larger-than-expected fruit

To dig further into this dogma-busting evidence, Upchurch recruited students to join the research, one of whom was Dori Contreras, now director of paleontology and curator of paleobotany at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, Texas.

During her PhD studies at the University of California Berkeley, Contreras continued pursuing this research, working with her advisor, Cindy Looy. Analyzing the reproductive structures of the samples that Upchurch, Contreras and their research colleagues collected over the years, UC Berkeley PhD student Jaemin Lee found in the well-preserved specimens evidence of larger-than-expected fleshy fruit—about the size of a blueberry.

“One possible reason for this had to do with the fact that we were not dealing with fruits and seeds that got washed into the nearest pond,” Upchurch explains. “We were dealing with material that had basically been dropped from the parent plants into a volcanic ash bed that was preserving both the forest leaf litter and the diaspores. It’s a Pompeii type of situation.

“There’s a series of volcanic ash beds where we have radiometric dates as well as different types of fossil plant material—we have leaves, we have diaspores, we have exquisitely preserved petrified woods, both of conifers and angiosperms.”

Further, the diaspores they found suggest an ecological evolution toward humid and shady tropical forests rather than sunny, open environments and dispersal assistance by extinct mammals and birds, Upchurch says.

In ecology, he explains, organisms broadly reproduce via r-selection or K-selection. R-selection is all about numbers: disperse a huge number of small seeds and figure a tiny percentage will germinate and become established. K-selected species, on the other hand, have bigger diaspores and the focus is on survival and establishment because conditions might not be ideal—say, the shade of a tropical forest floor.

Upchurch notes that while previously held ideas about angiosperms weren’t wrong—they did, in fact, abundantly flourish after the asteroid hit Earth—they were incomplete.

“As a scientist and a researcher, sometimes there have been moments I wasn’t expecting, these rare golden finds,” he says. “But the most important thing I’ve done is simply observe.”

Jaemin Lee, Dori L. Contreras, James G. Saulsbury and Cindy V. Looy contributed to this research.

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CU Museum curator adjoint Gary Upchurch and colleagues find evidence in ‘botanical Pompeii’ that forests of tropical flowering plants thrived millions of years before dinosaurs’ extinction.

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Top illustration: An artistic rendering of the forest understory in the late Cretaceous based on fossils from the Jose Creek Formation in New Mexico. (Illustration: Brian Engh/LivingRelicProductions.com)

What can one tiny scanner detect in Mammoth sunflowers?

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 22:59:23 +0000

What can one tiny scanner detect in Mammoth sunflowers? Rachel Sauer Fri, 08/14/2026 - 16:59

Tiffany Plate

Researchers in ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology are taking a closer look at the drought-recovery efforts of these beloved blooms

Drive down even the driest road in Colorado at the height of summer, and you’re bound to see rows of bright sunflowers lining the shoulder. And even if at the end of a long hot day those long-stemmed blooms look a little wilted, there’s a good chance that by the next morning they’re standing tall again.

That observable bounceback has led researchers to believe that sunflowers are capable of a process called “refilling,” in which the plant’s water transport capability, which can fail during intense drought stress, returns to normal after it has been rewatered. Refilling flushes drought-induced air bubbles, called embolisms, out of the plant’s water transport tubes to deliver much-needed moisture throughout the plant.

Study authors (left to right) Jared Stewart, Stephanie Polutchko and Brendan Allen found that, contrary to popular belief, sunflowers were not capable of “refilling” themselves after experiencing drought and subsequent rewatering. (Photo: Stephanie Polutchko)

But according to a recent study by researchers in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, refilling is not the cause of sunflowers’ apparent bounceback.

“We didn't see a single convincing instance where even one of the tubes was repaired,” says Research Associate Jared Stewart. Stewart served as lead author on a recent article in the Journal of Experimental Botany documenting his team’s use of a micro-CT scanner to peek inside sunflowers at various stages of dehydration and rehydration.

The finding stands in stark contrast to the results of a study the same team performed on a weedy grass, which was published last year in the journal Proceedings from the National Academy of Sciences USA. In that instance, the grasses’ refilling capabilities were remarkable.

“There wasn't any real gray area with the two findings,” says Stewart. “This grass refilled 100% completely in every single plant, every single time. In the sunflowers, we saw zero refilling.”

So where does that leave the field of plant hydraulics? “In last year's paper we showed that this refilling process does happen,” says Stewart. “But these results suggest it’s probably not nearly as prevalent as people thought.”

Why sunflowers?

The study grew out of a conversation between Stewart and his then-postdoctoral advisor Sean Gleason, a plant physiologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, along with ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� colleagues Stephanie Polutchko, an assistant teaching professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and graduate student Brendan Allen. The four linked up with researchers at Colorado State University and mapped out a way they could leverage CSU’s micro-CT scanner to observe the drought processes in the plants.

Sunflower was an ideal candidate, Stewart says, because literature on plant hydraulics almost unanimously supported the idea that sunflowers were capable of refilling (in part because of the daily visual evidence of the flower wilting and then perking back up). In fact, for a long time most experts in plant hydraulics believed that refilling was a fairly universal phenomenon. The problem was that there was very little concrete evidence to back up that belief.

“Previously published evidence for this repair process has been scrutinized more and more intensely over the past decade,” says Stewart. The team thus opted for a simple experimental setup to ensure there was no confusion about the results.

A mouse-sized scanner to the rescue

An essential part of that simple design was using the micro-CT scanner that belongs to CSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. The small scanner is designed to scan small, live animals and was engineered to emit as little radiation as possible—so study subjects can be scanned repeatedly without exposure to high levels of radiation.

A sunflower plant experiencing drought and one week after being rewatered (top), and micro-CT images of its stem (bottom). The white arrows indicate where the stem was scanned, and the yellow areas in the micro-CT images show air bubbles, or embolisms, in yellow. (Image courtesy of study authors)

The setup was perfect for Stewart’s team, who scanned the 11 specimens of the “Mammoth” variety of sunflowers at three different times: while under drought stress, on the morning after re-watering and after one week of recovery under well-watered conditions. The plants were able to withstand the scanning with no visible damage.

That was not true in past studies on the topic, including research that dates back more than 40 years. “Conventional ways of studying this have involved basically cutting out portions of the plant,” says Stewart. “Then you do the same procedure on a different plant that’s been rewatered.”

That process of cutting the plant has been suspected to be problematic for more than 100 years, Stewart says, since it introduces air into the incision, making it difficult to measure the embolisms that existed in the tube prior to cutting. But that method has remained one of the most commonly used in the literature and may be a cause for confusion about the topic.

Now, Stewart believes they’ve come up with a gold standard method for studying this phenomenon. “Personally, I wouldn't trust any data generated with any other published methods at this moment,” he says.

A new line of questioning

Now that the team has validated their methodology with the two different studies, they see it as a first step in designing future experiments.

“There’s a ton of different directions we’d love to go with it,” says Stewart, adding that he hopes their results might be leveraged for agricultural efforts to improve food production and food security, especially as the planet potentially faces an increase in droughts.

“I think if we got to pick another crop to study and had unlimited time and money, it'd probably be corn or rice,” says Polutchko. “We know that a grass can do it, but it's one that’s an agricultural nuisance. So, can we have a grass that we like to eat that can also do this?”

Ideally, now that the method has been laid out, other researchers with access to similar micro-CT scanners can also conduct their own research, especially on crops with agricultural significance.

As for the sunflower’s drooping and reperking routine, Stewart, Polutchko and team are still stumped. “Maybe the plant doesn’t refill those embolisms, but it has a different strategy to work around that stress. Those are great questions, and we want to know the answers.”

“In true scientist fashion, you answer one question and 10 new ones pop up!” says Polutchko.

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Researchers in ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology are taking a closer look at the drought-recovery efforts of these beloved blooms.

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Top image: Unsplash

Scott Taylor elected councilor of the American Ornithological Society

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 15:33:13 +0000

Scott Taylor elected councilor of the American Ornithological Society Rachel Sauer Tue, 08/11/2026 - 09:33

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researcher will serve as a member of the Society’s governing body and promote its mission to support science that advances the understanding and conservation of birds

Scott Taylor, a University of Colorado Boulder professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and director of the Mountain Research Station, has been elected a councilor of the American Ornithological Society (AOS).

In this three-year volunteer term, Taylor, who also is a fellow of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, will serve as a member of the AOS governing body, which “establishes the direction and strategy of the AOS, makes high-level decisions about AOS’ priorities, oversees the sound financial management of AOS’ resources and ensures legal and ethical integrity of the organization,” according to the organization.

The AOS’ mission is to connect ornithologists, science and bird conservation by “supporting science that advances the understanding and conservation of birds, promoting broad access to ornithological science, supporting ornithologists throughout their career paths and fostering a welcoming, diverse, supportive and dynamic ornithological community.”

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� scientist Scott Taylor has been elected a councilor of the American Ornithological Society.

In his councilor candidate statement, Taylor noted that he is deeply committed to the AOS “as both a scientific home and a community that has shaped my career. Having benefited from AOS through collaborations, mentorship networks and opportunities to engage with cutting-edge research, I am motivated to give back in a leadership role.”

His involvement with AOS has included serving on committees, organizing symposia and building inclusive community spaces at annual meetings

“I am particularly interested in helping the Society continue to foster a vibrant, inclusive and forward-looking ornithological community while supporting early-career scientists, strengthening connections across disciplines and engaging in effective outreach,” he noted in his candidate statement.

Taylor, who grew up in rural southern Ontario, earned his undergraduate degree in wildlife biology at the University of Guelph and his PhD at Queen’s University. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and worked as a field biologist in South America.

As principal investigator of the Taylor Lab, he leads research focused on hybridization, speciation, evolutionary ecology and population genomics, primarily of birds. He and his colleagues pursue research using natural hybrid zones and recent radiations to understand the genetic bases of traits involved in reproductive isolation, population divergence and speciation, and the impacts of anthropogenic change, including climate change, on species distributions, interactions and evolution.

Taylor also is host of the podcast “Okay, But… Birds,” which has addressed topics ranging from whether birds invented music to how wildfire smoke affects birds and a rumination on whether birdwatching is the original Pokémon with Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Ed Yong.

“Being elected to AOS Council is an honor,” Taylor said. “I have long worked to help the AOS become a more inclusive society and am impressed by the dedication of the society to their members. In my new role, I’ll continue this work at a larger scale, supporting the next generation of ornithologists and ornithological research.”

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researcher will serve as a member of the Society’s governing body and promote its mission to support science that advances the understanding and conservation of birds.

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Top image: a flock of pelicans in Peru (Photo: Scott Taylor)

Scholar finds rhythm in rock and rhetoric

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 23:23:30 +0000

Scholar finds rhythm in rock and rhetoric Rachel Sauer Mon, 08/10/2026 - 17:23

“A rhythm is predictable, but what makes rhythms exciting sometimes is the fact that they do change… it’s the balance between the predictability and the spontaneity. That’s what makes life worth living,” says Steve Lamos. (Photo: Jesus Ortiz/@optimisticphoto)

Cody DeBos

As a founding member of influential band American Football, currently on tour, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Professor Steve Lamos blends music and writing in ‘resonant literacy’

Steve Lamos is relaxing at home during a brief pit stop after touring with his band for two weeks. By Friday, he’ll be on a plane to Japan. Somewhere in between, he finds time to lesson plan and grade papers.

This is normal life for Lamos, an associate professor in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of English and Program for Writing and Rhetoric.

Every so often, he trades the world of academia for a tour bus as the drummer and trumpet player for American Football, the influential Midwest emo and math-rock band he co-founded in 1997.

Steve Lamos is an associate professor in the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of English and Program for Writing and Rhetoric.

This spring, the band released its fourth studio album, “LP4,” its first in nearly seven years.

Now juggling his teaching career with his band’s busiest touring schedule yet, Lamos calls this summer “both a blessing and a little bit of a, wow, you know, be careful what you wish for.”

Hiatus to homecoming

American Football’s new record almost didn’t happen.

Between 2020 and 2023, Lamos stepped away from the band while serving as interim director of the Program for Writing and Rhetoric, a role he describes as a “24/7 type of job.”

Around the same time, unresolved tension within the band came to a head and Lamos was focused on managing more responsibilities at home after a family member fell ill.

“Stepping away was inevitable,” he says.

But as any musician knows, putting down your instrument often comes with a sense of nostalgia for what once was. So, it was absence that brought Lamos back to American Football—realizing that the weight of missing it was greater than "whatever things were demanding that I step away or more than I was aggravated by those things, that’s when I knew,” he says.

The circumstances surrounding his return are why this album means more to him than the three that came before it, including a genre-defining first record.

Want to see your professor on stage?

American Football will perform tour dates through summer and fall 2026, including Sept. 22 at Boulder Theater and Sept. 23 at Red Rocks Amphitheater.

Learn more

“It represents our ability to get back together and do new things. I’m probably the proudest of it of anything I’ve ever done,” he says.

The rhythm of resonant literacy

Lamos kept his two lives strictly separated for many years, but today he’s quite willing to bring them together.

While teaching an upper-division course called Writing with Music, he’s developed a concept he calls “resonant literacy.”

As Lamos explains, it all starts with rhythm.

Within his framework, resonance is what follows.

“Resonance is when rhythm in one body generates rhythms in one or more other bodies,” Lamos says.

Over time, he’s learned to apply the concept as readily to a drum set as to a well-written sentence or the back-and-forth of a good conversation.

Resonant literacy often manifests in Lamos’ classroom. In Writing with Music, students spend a semester narrating the feel of a favorite song, then write a research paper arguing why that feeling should matter to a specific audience.

“Like, what a useless thing,” Lamos says, only half-joking. “Except, if students are doing it right, I routinely get the best work I’ve ever gotten.”

But really, Lamos says the idea is less about music or writing than about how to live. Understanding the rhythms we both create and are subjected to offers us a richer viewpoint as we navigate life’s ups and downs.

“There are ways in which you can influence those rhythms, or even make yourself better at generating them, and then leaving yourself more and more open to the possibility that they resonate, ideally in some sort of transformational way that makes life more vibrant and exciting,” he explains.

Where two worlds meet

When looking for it, Lamos finds that resonance often shows up in unexpected places, too. That includes relationships formed in the classroom that have blossomed into new creative ventures.

Vidushi Goyal was a science-writing student in Lamos’ class about a decade ago. Years after graduating, and coincidentally at the same time as his hiatus from American Football, Goyal shared some of her music.

“Every piece she sent me, I was like, ‘Oh man, this is good. This is even better than the last one.’ So, I asked if she wanted to play with some live drums, and she was in. We did some stuff together and I still get to play with her as a two-piece now and then,” Lamos says.

More recently, CU music student Max Adams organized a concert collaboration with Lamos this spring, arranging several American Football songs for a live ensemble.

Asked to describe it, Lamos’ face lit up.

“One of the cooler experiences I’ve ever had in my life,” he says.

‘ANDing’

For Lamos, making the most of a life defined by two wholly different paths comes down to a word the College of Arts and Sciences has embraced: “ANDing.”

“It’s this idea that part of what arts and sciences is about is this additive thing… taking two things that might seem disparate or even running at cross-purposes, and seeing what happens when you bring them together,” he says.

The label is fitting for a career built on the instincts of rhythm.

Resonance and “ANDing” are, in a sense, two names for the same idea that has carried Lamos from a grad school garage band to a tenured professorship and an international concert venues.

Whether you call it resonant literacy or borrow CU’s branding, the lesson is the same one Lamos wants to pass on to his own teenagers and to any student wondering whether a writing seminar and a rock band can not just coexist but become more than the sum of their parts.

“Do something practical, do something wholly impractical, and figure it out,” he says. “Figure out a way to bring them together, because you're only going to be happy in your life in the long term if you do.”

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As a founding member of influential band American Football, currently on tour, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Professor Steve Lamos blends music and writing in ‘resonant literacy.’

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Top image: Steve Lamos (left), Mike Kinsella, Nate Kinsella and Steve Holmes of American Football (Photo: Alexa Viscius)

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